Saturday, July 9, 2016

America Can't Stand If We Don't Get a Grip on Hate

I asked on a Facebook post today: "can anyone actually parrot the NRA's assertions that the more guns Americans have, the safer we are" with a straight face? After watching the blood running in our streets for the last few years - cops killing members of the public, African-Americans in most cases. Amazing how the old saying - "wanted: dead or alive" applies differently to the races with "alive mostly meaning whites and "dead mostly meaning blacks".

But the next day, it's a different story. A sniper, taught to be deadly by our own military targets police officers, killing five of them and wounding several more.

And the next day, its a toddler killing his father or a father killing is son or a mother killing her daughters.

The following day, it is theater-goers dying or celebrants in a night club or classrooms full of children or churches full of the devout

Or is is a neighbor killing his neighbor or a gang member killing another gang-member...or perhaps an innocent child who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The next day it is a jealous husband killing his estranged wife or maybe it is your depressed brother killing himself.

I hear talk of revolution all the time. We have to have these guns because we very well may have to fight our government. You know, that government that's taking all our freedoms? We will not tolerate being enslaved by the authorities! We love us some Bundy clan, But if you are one who believes this way, then you should feel a sense of kinship with the shooter in Dallas and with the Black Lives Matter crowd. They are pushed to exactly the point you say you are being pushed to. They see themselves being killed for no crime that deserved the death penalty...or perhaps any crime at all. They see a government that has turned on them.

But, oh, ho, this isn't how most of you feel at all. You've flipped your position. Now, you are all in favor of the government in the guise of the cops. You support the authorities. They are the good guys (and most of them are good guys). It is the bitter revolutionaries who are wrong....not like when YOU spout those seditious slogans!

Present day America is awash in hate and violence. I listen to the Patriot Channel and discover that as a liberal, I hate cops. I sympathize with radical Muslims. I support a president who probably IS a Muslim! I want to ban ALL guns and confiscate the ones people already have. I spit on the American flag. I hate Jesus. I want totally open borders - terrorists and Mexicans and whoever else - come one, come all.

I assume the conservative radio hosts know they are spewing the purest kind of bullshit but obviously, the majority of their listeners don't. They hate me because this is what they think I am though this characterization is wrong in every instance. I know this because I hear them every day.

Our politics have become the Hunger Games. Close to half of us loathe our own president. We no longer prefer one candidate; we despise the opposition. Well, naturally, because they don't just want to institute different policies that we disagree with, they literally want to destroy America. Donald Trump and Ted Nugent and some of the others walk right up to the line of encouraging their fans to kill their opponents....to save our country.

I don't see how America can stand with this much animus and lust for killing swirling around.